Dear Sisters, Brothers, and Kin,
Over the past month, we have seen exciting developments in the labor movement, locally and nationally. St. Paul educators came to the very precipice of a strike before reaching a significant agreement with the St. Paul Public Schools. Their counterparts in Minneapolis, seeking the same benchmarks—substantial wage increases for classroom assistants; wage increases for teachers; security for teachers of color; increases in mental health support for students—undertook an impressive 2+ week strike which led to significant progress and set a foundation for a strong union presence in the future. Workers at four Twin Cities Half-Price Books stores won union elections, and their success launched a nationwide organizing campaign at the country’s largest used books chain. Organizing campaigns among Starbucks workers, nationally and locally, spread rapidly, as four Twin Cities shops filed for elections.
Amazon workers in Staten Island, New York, won their first election, while Twin Cities workers, organized by the Awood Workers’ Center, led the Minnesota House of Representatives to pass new regulations to ensure safety precautions for all warehouse workers.
Last month, ESFL convened two panel discussions, one among Half-Price workers (watch here) and one among Media and Entertainment industry union members (watch here), which provided insights into why and how workers are organizing today.
At ESFL, we seek to curate conversations between the past and the present as a way to encourage critical thinking to inform paths to the future. In the next week, we will convene conversations around two exciting new labor books, Joe Burns’ Class Struggle Unionism and Daisy Pitkin’s On the Line. These programs will be recorded so you can watch them later on, but we encourage you to join us live so that you can take part in the conversation. And, please, join us for other great programs in April.
Love and Solidarity,
Beth Cleary and Peter Rachleff